The truth about NT

July 1, 1997 - Reading time: ~1 minute

OK, here's the truth about NT.

• It's wicked slow (even on my 266Mhz P-Pro II)
• It needs a lot of memory (128mb)
• The vm system does weird things and image activation fights with the file system buffer cache
• It's not as reliable as UNIX

There. I said it. Please note that I've been using NT for a long time and like it. I am at that crux where using NT and UNIX are about the same. I used to be a huge SunOS bigot. Then I became very NetBSD/FreeBSD oriented. Then I discovered SVR4 and Solaris. Most recently I turned to Linux (a lot, and I like it a lot). But the truth is that if I had to trust my job to an OS I'd pick Sun Solaris 2.5.1 and run it on a Sparcstation. Sad but true.

I like NT but it is anything but crisp. It seems to eat memory for breakfast lunch and dinner. CPU also. It also has these weird effects where apps will just hang now and then. Who knows why.

And the DOS baggage. Can we please loose the DOS baggage? No more "C:" PLEASE. Can't we all just use UNC file names and live in peace? And while were at it, can we use forward slashes everywhere? Thanks. I'll be using an editor with 8-space-tab-stops thank you very much.